 |
The Rife Report September 2010 |
 |
|
IE9 Beta Due Soon; "Flight" and "PIXresizer" After my summer hiatus (most time spent avoiding humid heat), I'm playing catch-up - bouncing with betas one might say. Computer tech enthusiasts probably know by now that the Windows 7 SP1 beta was made available for restricted public download earlier this summer. Actually the software (full name Build 6.1.7601.16562 Beta) was released Friday, July 27.  Mind you, there is a way to get the beta if you are a home user, not among the "selected" individuals. At this point I'll issue my usual warning about beta software usage - don't mess with it if you're the least bit unsure of any of your software abilities! You must uninstall it to be able to install the eventual real SP1. It also may conflict and foul up your system - no guarantees! Your problem! If you still want to get involved, the restriction process can be subverted by you fibbing about what you are - call yourself a "developer." Otherwise you get detoured from the true download path. Respected tech writer Paul Thurrott describes how to get around Microsoft's "rules" to obtain the beta on his Supersite for Windows When / If you install the beta (having first chosen either the 32 or 64-bit version) you will, beginning March 30, 2011 get reminders of its impending death. It has a short life. Expiration occurs June 30, 2011. The Real McCoy, the full SP1, will arrive (according to the MS Technet site) "within the first half of calendar year 2011." That despite the huge number of persons who expected it to be released before the end of this year.  However "in reality, Windows 7 SP1 includes a few pieces of functionality that Microsoft hasn't made available via Windows Update or through various security patches. Company officials still insist these are enhancements, rather than new features. These "enhancements" include things such as support for more third-party federation services; improved HDMI audio device support and XPS printing fixes." And Foley adds that she hears that the new rumoured target release: "is supposedly April 2011." Speaking of Betas, on August 17, Microsoft issued what it calls an update to Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta, which was released back in June, three years after the original came on the market. Should one call the update Beta 2? No word yet when the full release arrives.  This Beta update or Beta 2 ( if you wish), gives Messenger shorter sign-in times, quicker social media feed refreshes, improved animation speed, and compatibility with Facebook chat as well as video chat that uses much fewer CPU resources. Movie Maker now supports higher bit-rate movies, video uploads to SkyDrive, and single-frame grabs. You can now publish videos directly from Movie Maker or Photo Gallery to Flickr. Photo Gallery facial recognition works faster and now has preview mode and a better tree view. Writer has spell check and better integration with Office. Family Safety's web filtering has been given more speed. Peter Bright on Ars Technica's site says: "Arguably the biggest new feature is in Windows Live Messenger. The original beta included the new social view with Facebook updates; with Beta 2, this has been extended to include integration with Facebook chat. The 300 million Windows Live Messenger users can now use Messenger to chat with the 500 million Facebook users." The build number of Microsoft's new Beta is 15.4.3001.809. If you're curious, some of the apps also have a different number. The Beta update download is here Wow, more Beta news! Microsoft will release an IE9 public Beta in mid-September. The company's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner set September 15 as the date when it will be available.  Mary Jo Foley suggests in her online blog, that the final form of IE9 could be released as early as April 2011, at Microsoft's MIX event in San Francisco. In an August 25 posting, she noted: "Microsoft has delivered four developer previews of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 so far, but has yet to show off the new interface for its next-generation browser." She adds that: "Microsoft Russia's press site, posted information and a photo that seem to be connected to the coming IE 9 beta. (The site has since pulled their post, but I grabbed the information and screen shot in the nick of time)."  According to Foley, "the Russia MS site said there will be a new, simplified navigation bar with IE 9 that will leave more room for the (Web) site itself. There will be some navigation tools for commonly used functions - things like a back button and a combined address / search bar. But the numerous menu items in older versions of IE have "been consolidated into one. Now the user sees only what you need to navigate." Neowin.net's Tom Warren posted screen shots from what he believes to be a leaked test build of IE 9 at this site: That build includes a new download manager and support for HTML5 (an improved JavaScript engine with the ability to tap a computer's graphics chip to accelerate text and image rendering). You should also be aware that IE9 will run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but NOT on Windows XP, the aging (almost 9-years old) operating system, that still has more than 60 % of the market. Another not-so gentle hint from Microsoft that it really is time to upgrade. In the real world, Microsoft last year began an 18-month program of cutting 5,000 jobs. The most notable first victim was ACES, a wholly owned studio that produced the long-lived and loved Flight Simulator game. Now old friends of the Sim flight line, don't get your knickers in a twist - as a great aunt used to say. Microsoft says that although ACES was shut down, the company remains committed to the Flight Simulator franchise. Just how well that will be accomplished without the hundreds of old team members is another matter.  CNet's tech writer Ina Fried dug deeper and says the game is in its early development stages, with: "an alpha version nearly ready for internal testing, according to Kevin Unangst, a senior director in Microsoft's game unit." There are few details, but she quotes Unangst: "that it is looking to appeal to flying enthusiasts with the realism, accuracy, and fidelity they expect, but also imagines including other types of gameplay that might appeal more to novices. It's an opportunity for us to branch out even more into something that's approachable." Fried points out that: "It will mark the first new flight simulation title for Microsoft since the 2006 release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The company's first version dates back to 1982. The company has also licensed some of its technology to Lockheed Martin for a forthcoming military training program called Prepar3d. " It is hard to believe, but Flight Sim was introduced 28 years ago. The last previous version was called Flight SimulatorX. Now we have - Microsoft Flight. You can't play it yet, but you can see a short teaser video here: It tells nothing about how the program will work. A girl's voice says: "When I was a child, I dreamed I could fly." A plane zooms past over the sea-side into the sunset. About all we know is that Microsoft has confirmed that MS Flight will be Windows exclusive game. Whether Flight will cater to the hard-core audience is still, you could say, up in the air. It does seem an unlikely scenario with the Aces team gone. If you're an Age of Empires fan, its trailer video is more detailed, showing game play scenes and more. Microsoft is taking signups for a public beta expected later this year. We have been told that Age of Empires Online adds revamped graphics along with the ability to engage in co-operative multi-player quests. It is not official, but my think tank suggests that the most asked question in the past couple of months is one I've answered many, many times before. It only proves there's more people getting into tech for the first time each passing day.  The question arrives after birthdays, barbecues, anniversaries and trip vacations. They involve memories that the sender wants to share, as is quite normal. The answer is usually a simple matter of size - the pictures are either too large in size or amount to too many in quantity. Internet service providers have a (sometimes unstated or not stated too clearly) upward limit on such things. Ergo, the email won't go through, or if it does, the picture attachments are missing. Perhaps you've noticed when a large group of pictures did eventually get through to your recipient, that it did take a really long time. That was an indication you and / or your recipient were at or near the upward limit set by the providers. Answer: Resize your precious pictures before sending. If you have a huge number (even of the resized ones, consider sending them in two or three batches instead of in one email. To begin with, most digital pictures right out of the camera these days are huge - look at those originals via your computer's viewer - often you can't see all the shot without scrolling both up and down. Suggestion: There are a lot of ways to reduce the size of a picture, but the simplest to use and still available as a free download is PIXresizer from David De Groot's Bluefive software in Belgium. The homepage is here. The reduced files are saved in a different folder, so your original images are not altered at all. (Hint: you could then rename them - add a capital "A" say - to remove all possible confusion). PIXresizer can also convert the image formats (to JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF) and can even convert to grayscale. The software can resize individually or in batch mode. It runs on Windows 98 / ME / NT4 / 2000 / 2003 / 2008 / XP / Vista / Win7. And if you still run Win 95, there's actually an older version that will work for you on that OS.  |